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Learning Futures: Day One Insights
I’m at the Learning Futures Symposium today and tomorrow. I’m not blogging summaries of sessions because, to be fair, that’s often quite dull. However, I thought I’d take the opportunity to take the conference discussions to springboard some observations or thoughts that occurred during these interactions…
Insight #1: There is a reasonable amount of critical distance in terms of the ‘digital natives/digital immigrants’ rhetoric, but the same critical perspective doesn’t stretch to critiquing the idea of ‘web 2.0’. Whereas ideas which supposedly encompass an entire generation are easy enough to pull apart, many educators seem wary of software and claims made about software as they acutely feel that this is one of the few areas in which students know more about this area than they do. I suspect that if the same educators were dipping their toes in a little more they’d realise something commonsensical which seems to have entirely escaped these kind of conversations: that while there are many types of web 2.0 software, there are generic skills to be found in using these tools and platforms. The reason that people can move from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook so easily, for example, is that at a basic level there is a lot of similarity between the way these platforms operate and the skills needed to use them. Sure, the rate of new names of software can be overwhelming, but if we remember that a large section of the skills learnt using one social software platform are viable for the next, super-duper, upcoming must-have web 2.0 tool are transferable, that makes taking the time to learn and teach them a whole lot more important and palatable. And social software platforms are just one example; skills in blogging, using wikis and many other forms of ‘web 2.0’ tools are similarly transferable and, at some level, generic. Perhaps we should be focusing more on what those skills are.
Insight #2: Often the people in the driving position for educational policy aren’t confident to make decisions about ICT – nor should they be!
It’s Going to be a BIG September!
I’m attending four conferences or symposia across the next four weeks. In a perfect world, each will come with details blogging; however, if I don’t get around to writing much for a few weeks, here’s why …
[X] Learning Futures Symposium – 10 & 11 September, Canberra – This is a two-day symposium held at ANU looking at the changing shape of education, pedagogy and learning in general in the face of changes brought on by digital communication under the web2.0 umbrella. The programme (pdf) looks pretty interesting, with showcases of Australian social software educational efforts and some great sessions which are more centred around conversations than too many formal presentations.
[X] Thinking Society, Thinking Culture – 13 & 14 September, Perth – This is an interdisciplinary forum organised by the Institute for Advanced Studies at UWA with the aim of bringing WA’s many academics, researchers, artists across the range of historical and cultural studies, and other social sciences, together the share their work and build fruitful interdisciplinary networks and exchanges. I’m giving my paper “‘We’re sorry, but the clip you selected isn’t available from your location’: Watching Battlestar Galactica in Australia and the Tyranny of Digital Distance” in ‘A Digital World’ session which takes place on Friday, 14 September starting at 10.30; this panel will also feature Toby Burrows talking about ‘e-Research and the Humanities: Current Directions’, Ethan Blue talking about ‘Prison Medical Photography in Early 20th-Century California’ and Jeremy Blank speaking on ‘Past,Present,Futures:Integrating practice in Visual Art studies’.
The keynote is being delivered on Thursday (13th) evening by Ross Gibson from UTS talking on “The Aesthetics of Repletion“; this talk is open to the public, so if you’re in Perth, come along!
[X] PerthDAC – Digital Arts & Culture – 15 to 18 September, Also Perth – DAC has a history of being at the cutting edge of digital arts and media studies and this year looks to be no exception. There’s lots to look forward to, from talks on blogs in education to Axel Bruns on produsage to a host of key names in game studies talking about everything from Second Life to the Wii. DAC is concurrent with BEAP (the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth) so the theory of DAC will mix with the performance and exhibitions of the latest in digital art which will no doubt be a very rich and exciting four days!
[X] The Australian Blogging Conference – 28 September, Brisbane (Free!)- Sessions will include The Politics of Blogging; Researching Blogging; Blogs, Creativity and Creative Commons; Legal Issues; Citizen Journalism, Blogs and Education; Business and Corporate Blogging; and Building a Better Blog. I’ll be facilitating part of the Blogs and Education session, although I’m not sure how many people will be there since I suspect the concurrent Citizen Journalism session, which includes a focus on YouDecide2007, might prove quite a draw-card. That said, Blogging in Education is certainly fun to talk about and there’s a lot going on in the world of edublogging, so I trust we’ll have some great exchanges in our session, too! To see who’s already confirmed they’re attending, click here; that list will grow substantially across the next few weeks, I suspect!
I’m also chuffed it’s September because that means Jill Walker Rettberg will be joining us at UWA for the month! And let’s not forget that October will also include Australia’s first Podcamp which will also be held in Perth!
Off the Grid!
I’m on leave, and Emily and I are away, until August 24th. More to the point, we’re going to be completely without internet connectivity (partially by choice, more by circumstance), so I’m going to be completely off the grid until we get back to Perth. So, please don’t take offence if emails go unanswered or moderated comments don’t appear in the meantime … I’ll get to most stuff within a couple of days after August 24th. Until then, enjoy this little picture I took of a little memento from our honeymoon …
The image shows a few rocks and pebbles that made their way from a park in Venice to our bedroom in Perth!
Talking Facebook, MySpace, Australian Politics and Class … on the radio
Yesterday I was interviewed by Laura Miller on RTR FM’s radio programme ‘Morning Magazine’. Laura and I spoke about about MySpace, Facebook, Australian politican’s using social software, and the recent interest in these spaces in terms of ‘class’ on the back of danah boyd’s work. For the two or three people in the world who would be interested in hearing me talk about these things, you can listed to an mp3 recording of the interview (which clocks in at just under 10 minutes) here.
Incidentally, Laura completed her Communication Studies degree at UWA last year and was part of a team who put together the wonderful comic exploration of the role of the Peacock’s at UWA and that video is viewable here (fans of Laura’s may want to focus around 2:18 in, which features a 1970s Laura cameo!).
Eight Things About Me (A Meme)
Chuck tagged me a few days ago with the Eight Things meme; although I’m generally fairly anti-meme, I’ve been enjoying a bit of back and forth with Chuck in his blog and on del.icio.us, so figured I could add one more procrastination on a writing day. Apparently, I have to start with rules …
Rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.
Eight Facts about Me:
1. When I was in Primary School I won a Lego building competition; this is, without a doubt, my fondest memory of the first 7 years of education.
2. Apart from The Goonies, the film that rattled around my brain the most when I was a kid was called Explorers. I was fascinated how three boys could essentially make a spacecraft out of everyday junk (and a little piece of alien technology). In retrospect, this example of making something amazing from the bits and pieces others leave lying around resonates with some of the way I view the internet and participatory culture (and until I looked it up on IMDb to link to for this post, I hadn’t realised River Phoenix was one of the kids).
3. When I was twelve years old I joined Perth’s Doctor Who fan club, The West Lodge, which was my first proper immersion into fandom; I attend the local science-fiction convention in the following year (Swancon 14) but found the whole thing rather intimidating and didn’t get back to Swancon until seven years later when Neil Gaiman visited Perth as GoH in 1996.
4. I have re-read all six of Frank Herbert’s Dune books as a series at least twenty times since I was 14; I’ve been relatively unimpressed by the prequel novels in the past few years.
5. My sister and I both have PhDs and are the first members of our family to ever attend university at all. My sister is eighteen months younger, started her thesis a year after I did, but we both were officially given our PhDs at the same graduation ceremony.
6. Emily and I currently live less than 14 metres from Subiaco Oval, which is where Australian Rules Football attracts 40-45,000 people most weekends. Despite AFL being Australia’s national winter sport, I’ve never been to a Football game.
7. Until last Saturday I had never test-driven a car, having bought my only owned vehicle to date from my parents. On Saturday I test-drove a Prius which Emily and I are seriously considering buying despite the fact it will take us several years to pay it off.
8. In the proposal for my PhD thesis in 2000, the final chapter was supposed to look at the use of computer-generated imagery and special effects in nature documentaries as a case study of artificial culture where natural and technological meaning merged together. (It never got written because after that proposal both September 11 2001 and the Spider-Man films happened, and I used the latter to interrogate the cultural impact of the former.)
You’re It! I now tag the following people (hoping at least a few will play along): Jill Walker Rettberg (just getting used to writing that double barrel surname!), Christy Dena, David Silver, Nancy Baym (because fandom has a meme for a heart!), Mia Consalvo (who can sadly not follow the meme and call it ‘cheating‘), Jean Burgess, Kate Raynes-Goldie and Kevin Lim (who lives for these sort of connections!).
The Art(s) of Venice
On our honeymoon last month, Emily and I were lucky enough to be in Venice during the heart of the 2007 Venice Biennale, one of the world’s most exciting and long-running art festivals. We saw many amazing installations and exhibitions and had a fabulous time exploring all sorts of art, as well as taking some (I think) cool photos, but I’ve found it hard to find the time to add the titles, tags and metadata to a full Flickr set. However, I’ve finally finished labeling the photos, so I encourage you to take a wonder through our captured fragments of the 2007 Biennale.
There were a number of highlights (and I’ll write about one more in a future post), but I wanted to mention a few things that really stood out. I thought Patrick Mimran’s installations and photography were amazing. His main show was an ironic set of photographs called ‘New York Parkings’ which looks at New York Car Parks, but Mimran also had an installation in Venice where a number of the rubbish bins were covered in “No Art Inside” billboards! 🙂
Also outstanding was the Taiwanese ‘Atopia’ pavilion which combined an interesting take on manga and comic-book art with some neon installations created out of mechanical parts and ubiquitous objects to really create an interesting take on the life of everyday objects.
Wearing my academic hat, I have to say Sophie Calle’s ‘Take Care of Yourself’ exhibition in the French Pavilion was outstanding. Calle took an email she received from a lover ending the relationship and asked 107 women to interpret the email for her, with responses ranging from photographs and videos to responses from academics attacking grammar and psychoanalysts delving into the emailer’s inner psyche. I wish instead of having undergraduate lectures on multiple interpretations of a text we could just get students to immerse themselves in Calle’s work for an hour … I suspect they’d learn a lot more!
There were lots of other interesting exhibits, but one that really spoke to me (so much so I forgot to take any pictures) was the Aniwaniwa installation from New Zealand, which combined Maori dreaming with images of the 1900 hydroelectric dams to show the moment(s) when water became electricity!
Of course, there’s were one or two (!) other bits of art to be found in Florence and Italy, but for the rebellious amongst you, check out a glimpse of the healthy street-art scene from these two magnificent cities.
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